Nation
To the 100th anniversary of the first state
Drama Theater of Ukraine
"NATION"
Revelation in two acts
The play is based on four short stories by Maria Mathios about the historical period of the late 1940s. The first novella "Yuryana and Dovgopol" is about strong feelings between a village woman driven to a collective farm and an emgebist overseer. Is it love or hate that flares so wildly between them? The next story "Get up, mommy!" about the Shandri family, who decided to play hide and seek with death! In order to deceive the strict commissars and avoid exile to Siberia, they came up with a fake funeral. But hardly anyone could predict how this "performance" would end. In the third picture, the life of Cornelia Danylyuk, full of danger and shrouded in mystery, cannot fail to impress. Her son Bohdan learns with surprise and delight how much courage, courage and wisdom his twenty-year-old mother once showed - in 1950, a liaison officer of the UPA army. To complete the task, Cornelia comes up with a risky plan and almost dies. At a critical moment, it is not a close friend named Kolyai who comes to her aid, but a Soviet officer, Ukrainian by origin, who, although he guessed who Cornelia is, saved her. And later he became her destiny, the father of her son. The last story "Forgive me" is about a couple in hiding, who are waiting for the birth of their first child. It's just that time is so uncertain that death sometimes comes before life...
The premiere is on September 29, 2018
"Genetically, the work of Maria Mathios is purely Ukrainian, but she addresses what is most human - the need for freedom and a sense of security, the right to happiness and free choice. The heroes of the "Nation" above all want to preserve their dignity. And dignity has no nationality, just as - according to the author - her blood does not. The writer does not create black and white characters. Each hero has enough contradictions, and each story has misunderstandings. And this is another phenomenal feature of this literature. No one is unequivocally condemned and no one is absolutely crystal clear. And above this tangle of human passions and conflicts, as if in an ancient tragedy, hangs a merciless fate that condemns people to a long, unfair and a priori losing struggle. Therefore, like the ancient tragedy "Nation", it evokes compassion and fear in us. Sympathy, because misfortune happened to an innocent person. Fear, because the same thing can happen to anyone..."
Anna Kozeniowska-Bihun, translator of "NACIA" in Polish (Maria Matios, "NACJA", Rzeszow, 2006)
